Dixon Wright on career growth, leadership paths, and using AI without losing expertise

Thomas chats with Dixon Wright about his career progression and what drives promotions, emphasizing hard work plus being in the right place at the right time.

Dixon discusses playing the long game, building subject-matter expertise before leading, and the importance of choosing work you enjoy rather than chasing compensation. He highlights the value of early consulting for transferable skills, professionalism, and in-person learning, and warns remote work and AI can weaken development and enable shortcuts.

They explore AI’s ROI, token costs, and how metric-driven cultures can reward low-value ‘activity’, arguing expertise is still essential to evaluate ideas and business impact.

Book/podcast recommendations include How I Built This, Radical Candor, The Advantage, Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, Slow Productivity, and Unreasonable Hospitality.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 01:30 Life as a Remote Dad

02:57 Career Growth and Promotions

05:31 Play the Long Game

08:32 Choose Passion Over Pay

12:49 Superstars vs Rock Stars

16:14 Why Consulting Builds Skills

20:09 AI Remote Work and Learning

22:57 AI ROI and Hidden Costs

35:03 Books Habits and Wrap Up

Mythos, Autonomous Pen Testing, and the Future of Self-Securing Software, with Mike Wilkes, Enterprise CISO at Aikido Security.

On the Cyber Security Recruiter podcast, Mike Wilkes discusses a busy week of CISO events at Google (Mythos/Glasswing gathering), the Harvard Club, and Meta’s OSAC cybersecurity committee, plus an NYSE TV interview about Aikido Security’s Series B and growth.

He explains Mythos Preview’s implications, including rapid vulnerability discovery (citing Firefox fixing 271 issues vs 20–30 historically), Anthropic’s restrictions, and the need for prioritization (EPSS) rather than chasing raw CVE volume.

Mike describes autonomous pen testing where a $7,000, two-week API test was replicated for $4 in 80 minutes, arguing the “harness” and orchestration matter most.

He emphasizes soft skills, listening, and translating security into business impact for boards, warns about privacy erosion, token-cost waste, supply-chain/model risks, and advocates small local models for privacy and resilience.

AI-Native Cybersecurity, MSP Automation, and What Education Must Change Next - with Manal Iskander

On the Cybersecurity Recruiter podcast, the host speaks with Manal Iskander, founder of PCtronics , co-owner of Green Shack Marketplace, and Marketing Lead at Fugazi about how AI and cybersecurity are now inseparable and how she’s using an AI-native, agentic software stack (including SuperOps, NinjaOne, SentinelOne, Huntress, and SharePoint-based automation) to speed onboarding, triage tickets, and generate monthly security and operations reporting that drives recurring revenue plus project work.

She describes using a human-centered “double diamond” approach (discover, define, design, deliver) with governance and accountability to decide what to automate vs. keep human-in-the-loop, giving examples like overriding blocked logins for a traveling CEO. She discusses private equity buying MSPs based on MRR, her goal to build toward a much larger exit, and her July 30 keynote in Sacramento for California higher-education CTOs on standardized AI adoption, governance, curriculum shifts toward critical thinking, and risks like Anthropic’s “Mythos” zero-day tool.

Book recommendations mentioned: “Abundance,” “The Human Fork Encoded,” and “The 80-Year Theory.”

00:00 Welcome and Introductions

00:28 Keynote and AI Security

01:51 Manel Background Story

03:25 Restaurants and Balance

04:47 Building an AI Native MSP

07:25 PBS Show Origin Story

09:47 Tech as Human Extension

13:54 Human in the Loop Security

15:19 Double Diamond Workflow

19:58 Automated Reporting Engine

23:20 Private Equity and Exit Plans

24:41 Leaving Reporting Teams

25:30 AI Tools For Operations

25:52 AI Boom For Business

26:57 Education Adapts To AI

30:18 Governance For Universities

31:30 Mythos Zero Day Fears

32:48 AI Geopolitics And Money

37:06 Human Fork And Cycles

40:22 Future Work And UBI

42:23 Keeping Up With Pace

43:42 July Keynote Preview

46:46 Adoption Divide And Wrap